Legal wrangle may hit panchayat poll timeline

LUCKNOW: Hundreds of villages in Uttar Pradesh appear to be caught in a legal wrangle between the urban and the panchayati raj departments over whether they are rural or urban bodies, people familiar with the matter said. The situation has the potential to derail the state election commission’s timeline for holding threetier village panchayat elections due in October.

The urban development department issued a notification in December 2019, merging around 300 villages and as many parts of other villages with city limits, putting them under the town area/nagar palika/ nagar nigam as the case may be. This affected over 40 districts and around 100 urban local bodies. But the panchayati raj department has not yet issued its own notification, excluding the same villages or parts of villages, from

jurisdiction of panchayats.

This has created a piquant situation because of which the work of delimitation of village panchayats remains stalled, making it virtually impossible for the state election commission to go ahead with the next electoral exercise of voter lists’ revision that was scheduled to begin from mid-February if the delimitation of village panchayats and wards had been completed by January 30.

The deadlock, according to people familiar with the matter, has arisen from the state government’s decision to allow the village panchayats, which are now parts of urban local bodies, to continue their work and spend funds till the end of the current financial year on March 31.

“The law is very clear that once a notification is issued for including a village panchayat into a city area that will immediately cease to exist as a ‘village panchayat’ and its pradhan’s accounts will be made inoperative,” they said.

“At the same time, the panchayati raj department is also required to issue its own notification under Section 8 of the UP Panchayati Raj Act that says village panchayats, which had been included in the city limits, are no longer in existence as village panchayats,” they added. The panchayati raj department, sources said, was not able to issue its notification in view of the government’s decision that has allowed the village panchayats to continue as such till March 31 even after their inclusion in the urban limits. “Although legally they have already ceased to exist as ‘village panchayats’ after the urban development department issued the notification in Decemthe

BUT THE PANCHAYATI RAJ DEPARTMENT HAS NOT YET ISSUED ITS OWN NOTIFICATION

ber including them under one or the other urban local body, we think it will be even more unlawful for us to issue our notification ending existence of such panchayats on the one hand and allowing them to use funds for work till March 31.Practically speaking, the government’s decision allowing village panchayats to continue to function till March 31 is correct because funds that are allocated in the budget have to be spent by the end of the financial year. But legally this position is not tenable,” said a panchayati raj department official.

All this has, however, caused consternation to the state election commission which fears that the timeline framed by it for the three-tier panchayat elections due in October may go topsyturvy. “The delimitation exercise itself will take at least one month to complete after the panchayati raj department issues the notification,” a state election commission official said.